


Did you fall from Heaven? Really?!

by vcent



Series: Sympathy for the Devil [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: First Meetings, Is not that deep, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 08:08:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20485640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vcent/pseuds/vcent
Summary: Taeyong is a frustrated art student working not so peacefuly at the Musée Fabre on his sketches of Alexandre Cabanel’sFallen Angel, until one unreal stranger approaches him with a weird question 'Why are you drawing me?'





	Did you fall from Heaven? Really?!

**Author's Note:**

> \- EDITED -

Taeyong sighed while looking down at his sketchbook. Will he ever get it done? This was his fifth time trying to finish his study of Alexandre Cabanel’s Fallen Angel and it was taking a toll on his scholarship-dependent-student-wallet taking the train from Paris to Montpellier so often.

He would be very glad if this was the last time, thank you very much. Fuck his teacher and his “You’re not getting the feeling, Taeyong. This is not Cabanel’s portrait but something else” bullshit and his golden ratio.

So far, he hadn’t had any trouble acing his studies of the artist but this time it just wasn’t working. And he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Everything from the technical criteria to the execution was right, and as he went back to his previous sketches, he didn’t see the difference. He sighed once more and cracked his neck. His back was killing him after who knows what many hours he had spent sitting in front of the painting not getting anything really done.

Maybe if he tried another one.

He looked back to scan the room and see if any other of Cabanel’s portraits would interest him. Recreating La Comtesse de Keller would be easier and quicker, and he could always go back to the Venus. But instead of finding a quick way out, a stranger staring at him caught his attention. He couldn’t see his features from across the room, but it made Taeyong’s heart pick speed. The stare heavy on him, penetrating and demanding. Almost as if he had been waiting for him to turn at the exact moment. Claiming his attention.

The stranger smirked and began to move in his direction. Striding towards him with such confidence, as if he owned the whole world and everyone were to kneel before him. It was arrogant, feline, even a little scary. The aura around him was something Taeyong had never felt neither seen.

He had read about all that bullshit of people “glowing” and Taeyong never believed any of it until now. The man didn’t glow though, it was something different, as if something radiated from him in the form of magnetic waves, pulling everything around him into his orbit, swallowing the air in the room. Something dark that Taeyong wouldn’t compare to bright and pleasant things, but at the same time the most alluring thing he had ever experienced.

“Can I sit?” The stranger asked, without minding Taeyong’s shocked stare and dumbly nod short after.

He was drop dead gorgeous now that he was up close, his features sharp and carved in a careful way, almost chiseled. Big chocolate eyes with a wicked twist in his stare. It wasn’t a gesture or the shape of them, more like the moment Taeyong looked into them, he knew they were trouble. His slick long hair was styled like he just came out of a photoshoot. The caramel skin of his neck running endlessly into his unbuttoned shirt, revealing toned muscles.

“Handsome, isn’t him?”

Taeyong frowned, confused for a moment after the silence. Was he reading Taeyong’s mind? But the stranger’s line of view wasn’t on him. He was staring at the representation of the Fallen Angel in Cabanel’s painting and the Korean stared too as if it was the first time he had seen the piece of art.

“Well… “ He said, getting shambles of his composure back and trying hard to make his voice not tremble too much. “He does represent the embodiment of perfection created by God”.

“And he really was”. The male said with a smirk hanging off his lips. Taeyong’s first reaction would have been to laugh at the strange comment, but the others’ tone wasn’t particularly playful. In fact, he looked a little too self-assured.

“It’s just the artist’s interpretation of a myth so, it’s really only the representation of human’s beauty standards of his age, nothing godly about him”. As Taeyong returned his gaze to the man, there was a hint of unexpected rage, so misplaced it startled him. A pure and consuming flame as the Korean had never seen and it sent shivers down his spine, making a cold drop of sweat travel down his nape.

“Does he look like a lowly common human being to you? The mere fantasy of the weak mind of an old man?” The stranger hissed.

Taeyong wanted to reply, but the stare of the other man was holding back his tongue in fright, the black eyes zero in on his soul and shutting his brain of anything else than wasn’t bewilderment and a little awe.

“Cabanel was gifted with the greatest honor of witnessing grace and perfection as any other human eye will never see. He would have never painted such a piece from his prosaic imagination only. No human can”.

“Are you saying Cabanel witnessed the fall of Satan from Heaven in the beginning of the times?” _What_.

“The chronology is wrong. It wasn’t exactly the fall he witnessed. There was no alive human being walking the place he was casted away to. What he saw it’s something forbidden for the human eye, an unmentionable occurrence. It exceeded his compression; therefore, he painted it in the only way you humans know about him”. The man finished with his chin pointing towards the portrait and Taeyong couldn’t help but look back and forth between the male and the painting as if Lucifer himself would strut his way out of the canvas.

“Are you drunk?” Was all he could comeback with. Only then he noticed the rim of scarlet red in the stranger’s eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks or had drank an entire liquor store the prior night. A big smile bloomed into the man’s face before he burst into sonorous laughter, making a few people in the gallery turn to glare at them, but he didn’t seem to mind at all.

“I don’t think that’s possible for a dead body anymore”.

“What?” Taeyong’s frown deepened as he stared at the smug smirk the other was sporting.

“So, tell me” The stranger ignored him. “Why are you drawing me?”

“Uh?” This man was definitely drunk.

The male pointed to the sketch book forgotten on his lap.

“Like me that much?”

“It’s just for a class” He responded absent minded, still glaring at the stranger that kept referring to himself as Cabanel’s Fallen Angel. There was a glint of performed disappointment that flashed through the other man’s eyes for a second before he pierced through Taeyong’s eyes with an inquisitive look.

“Aren’t you putting too much effort into a simply class project?” The sketch book was taken out of his lap faster than he could think of an answer and he was left baffled to kept quiet as the man scrutinized his work. Usually, he would have snatched his book back immediately, maybe even nag at the other a little about respect and boundaries. Having people looking at his unfinished work made his skin crawl, but right now he couldn’t bring himself to even dare to try. “I would have believed you if this was just a mere copy of his work but this, this is your interpretation of it. I can see your traces in it”.

It wasn’t often that he was confronted on his art so directly. So raw about how the way he projected himself on his own work. Teachers would give a somehow distant evaluation of it, based on rule books and classic norms. No one spoke to him about how deep the connection with himself really ran. It was a kind of understanding impossible to achieve for someone he just met. 

“Why do I look even sadder?” The male inquired, tilting his head.

“I think… I think Cabanel’s interpretation of his emotions…” Taeyong saw the man roll his eyes at the word ‘interpretation’ but he didn’t argue back. “… was wrong. Too much hate for someone that just lost all sense of who he was, was left homeless and rejected for everyone who ever claimed to love him. I think the tear drop was his way of concealing his inability to portrait the real feeling he wanted to embody”.

“Hmm… It could be. Cabanel was indeed a little incompetent. But I think you’re just too naïve. Too much of an idealist. Real evil does exist in this world, y’know?”

“Who are you?” Taeyong looked at him in utter disbelief and exasperation. The man shortly laughed before giving him a mischievous and know-it-all smirk, as if he couldn’t believe Taeyong dared to ask that.

“Well, I think his name was Yuta so, you can call me that”. He said while gesturing at himself as if his body was someone else’s.

“His name?” The now named stranger, Yuta, just shrugged and Taeyong decided to not push his weird shenanigans any further. Whether he was a drunk, a crazy man or some kind of fanatic, he still had a class to attend in an hour and a still very much unfinished study. “Can I have that back?” he asked with his hand extended towards his sketchbook and Yuta gave the sketch a final glance before passing it to him.

“You’re better than Cabanel” Yuta said while scrutinizing with an annoyed look the painting in front of him. Taeyong could only gape with his mouth open at the other as he sighed. “It used to be my favorite portrait” he whined.

“You do know he’s one of the greatest masters of The Salon, right?” Taeyong pointed out.

“So? You’re still better than him”. The male said without even blinking and Taeyong almost shivered. If his Academicism’s teacher could hear that. “And thanks to you, now I need a new portrait. It’s been a while since I let anyone paint me, and this body vessel right now it’s not bad. I wouldn’t mind having a memory of it. Are you perhaps interested?” Taeyong was glaring as he rambled with one eyebrow raised, but that just seemed to amuse Yuta. “It would be the greatest honor of your entire life and afterlife, y’know?”

Taeyong clicked his tongue in irritation before paying his attention back to the sketch.

“I’ll think about it”.

“Okay”. Was the last thing the man said before they fell into a taut silence. Taeyong trying to concentrate on his sketch and ignore the obvious stare of Yuta on him. He was practically trapped beside the other, unable to move to sit anywhere else if he wanted to finish his sketch. So, he tried his best to focus on the scratch of his pencil against the rough surface of the paper, until the sound of a lighter too near startled him.

“What are you doing? You can’t smoke inside here!” He almost shouted alarmed, glancing at the security guard in the entrance of the hall. Could he not see it?

“Says who?”

“You could cause an accident! Do you even know how much every piece of art in here is worth?” Yuta stared at him with a mocking glance before giving a long stride to his cigarette and exhaling the smoke in a slow pace right into his face, shrugging.

“I couldn’t give a fuck about Monet or Degas here”. 

Taeyong visibly gasped. His art student heart had taken the blow and he wanted to tell the stranger off, infuriated enough already by the previous nonsense of the other. He wanted to teach him a lesson on the value of art for humanity, but something told him he wouldn’t listen, that his problem wasn’t about ignorance but of indifference.

“You’re really something!” Taeyong was completely baffled. It wasn’t often that he heard people spitting on the greatest names of art, even less in the world he lived in, with people always trying to look culturized, praising a painter and their work just because someone else told them to even if the piece didn’t spoke or meant anything to them. But this stranger, he wasn’t trying to be edgy neither ignorant, just honest.

Maybe it was his big-headed speak, and he would never admit it out loud -by all he knew the man was a headcase- but he was also absorbed into Yuta’s demeanors.

“Why should I care? They’re all burning in hell already”.

“I don’t think they went to hell”. Taeyong disagreed.

“Oh, trust me! They did”. Yuta giggled.

Taeyong could swear his eye twitched as he stared at the other for what felt like hours. At this point he didn’t know if laugh or seriously ask someone for help in case Yuta had ran away from a mental institute. He didn’t seem like he was joking even though he sounded pretty sarcastic, and Taeyong wondered how someone like him ended up nuts.

His stare could pass as lunatic, actually. It sent electric jolts through his body in an unpleasant way, an itch he couldn’t get off. His tummy was getting upset as time went by and he felt his vision blurring at the edges, as if he suddenly was getting drowsy and daydreaming of weird silhouettes dancing in front of him. Shadows of too many Yutas and they all were smirking at him.

The fire alarm going off took him out of his stupor and he felt as if he had just woken up. He had to shake his head, confused at Yuta’s gentler smile, he would even say a little apologetic. _What for?_

“Oops!” Yuta said with a comical expression, as if he was trying hard to be really sorry but wasn’t in the slightest. People started to evacuate the gallery and Taeyong sighed, frustrated and frankly tired. There it was his grade.

The other stood up and stretched like a large cat, cigarette in between his long fingers. Cracking his neck and displaying for Taeyong to see the way the chains and accessories accentuated the soft curves.

“Let me know if you do want to paint the new me, uh?” Yuta proposed and Taeyong had to actually will his eyes to look upright at him.

“I don’t even have your number” He heard himself said before he could process the complete nonsense. Yuta smirked.

“I’ll know”. And with that the man turned his back to him and walked away, leaving Taeyong in the same place he first found him, frozen in the middle of the rush of people.

“Hey, pretty boy!” He heard Yuta call him loudly as he turned back to him, among the crowd. “See you in hell” he added with a wink.

_What the… ?_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enyojed ;) This is actually by far my favorite work I have published, so please do let me know how you liked. There'll be a second part to it, probably a chaptered one or a third part. Comments and kudos are always greatly appreciated (and very much needed ㅠㅠ).
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/waytonct) | [CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.me/mbbzen)


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